Timeless

This post isn’t about The Beatles, though it will feel like it at first. Nor is it about how I became a Beatles fan, though it will feel like that, too.

I actually didn’t heart The Beatles at first. You could say I literally grew up with The Beatles. They made their first appearance in the United States in 1964, the year I was born, and became instant icons in the American music scene. I missed all of the real Beatlemania, of course, as I was still pooping my pants, practically, when they were breaking up.

When I became aware of things in general, I noticed in nostalgic clips of The Ed Sullivan Show the girls in the audience, screaming and crying and swooning from the first note The Beatles played on his show, and I thought it just silly. Two of my sisters, being older than I am, were teenagers in the 1960s and, had they the means then, they would have been among those screaming, crying, swooning girls at Comiskey Park in Chicago on 20 August 1965.

Naturally, they had Beatles records at home. Due to my adverse reaction to the girls in the audiences on The Ed Sullivan Show and other film clips, I was, of course, just as repulsed by the music when my sisters played it in the house.

Over the course of the next ten years I was pretty much able to get by in life without much reliance on music. A few songs here and there caught my interest, but they were usually songs of a more novelty nature: “Kung Fu Fighting,” “ The Streak,” “King Tut” and the like.

Somewhere in there I had developed a liking for the song “Get Back,” yet, having successfully tuned out any of the music my sisters played, somehow I had never caught on the radio that it was a Beatles song. I blame the line in the song where Paul speaks the line, “Get back, Jo-Jo!” which is then followed by a George Harrison electric guitar solo. I knew back then the names of the individual members of The Beatles, so I figured at the time that Jo-Jo was the lead guitarist in whatever band that was.

In high school I made a new friend, Sam, who thought I was pretty cool, so on many weekends I was invited over to his house to hang out and play, make little animated and live-action movies on Super8 film, and learn new ways to try to be funny. Sam also happened to be a HUGE Beatles fan. I can’t all-caps, bold and italicize that enough. HUGE fan. It was one of those things I could tolerate because I liked the rest of him so much. Every once in a while he would pull out his Beatles records, hoping to share his love for their music with his new friend (I’d say “best friend,” but I’m not sure he considered me as such). He couldn’t seem to understand why someone who got him as much as I did and whom he got as much as he did could possibly not like the Beatles. I would groan about it and endure, hoping he would get it out of his system or get tired of me rolling my eyes, and then we would go back upstairs and stick silly, homemade dialogue balloons on his baseball cards.

Then one day he pulled out Let It Be. “Get Back” started up, and I gave him what must have been quite a perplexed look.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “This is The Beatles?!”

Then Sam gave me a perplexed look. “Yeah!” he said. “Who did you think it was?”

I was dumbstruck. The song played on, and I sort of felt my reality coming apart. I hated The Beatles. I liked “Get Back.” It was like one of those logic puzzles: The Beatles exist(ed); The Beatles created “Get Back;” I like “Get Back;” Therefore, I like The Beatles. It can’t be!

So thus began a serious reassessment of why I hated The Beatles. I went home and, in solitary moments when the sister who had not yet moved out of the house wasn’t home, I listened surreptitiously to her Beatles albums, this time without resisting them and tuning them out like I did at Sam’s house, but relaxing and letting their words and melodies get through. Within several weeks, with historical lessons from Sam about the band’s origins and their growth from minor celebrity to industry and social icons, I was a Beatles fan. Of course, right about this time was when John Lennon was murdered, so right when it felt good, it felt bad again.

But as I stated at the top of this post, this isn’t about The Beatles or why I’m a fan. The Beatles are used as a point of reference for the topic of my post.

What defines timelessness? How does a film or a novel or a song reach out across the decades from the era in which it was made and still manage to speak to us with its full power?

There have been many, many great films made since the dawn of the industry, but many of them have faded with their times, and their messages have lost their punch. But others stand strong forever. It’s A Wonderful Life, for instance — which is my all-time favorite film — is one I consider timeless. The story arc covers about thirty years in the life of one man. Clearly set in the earlier half of the 20th century, the film manages to transcend its era and drive home its message: the lives of everyone around you would be immeasurably different if you never existed. Whenever I watch that film, I never think, “What an old movie.” I think, “What a great story.” Regardless of your beliefs, and despite the film’s method, it’s a powerful concept: how different would be your neighborhood, your city, the world, if you were never born?

These days, whenever I hear an old Beatles song, it doesn’t seem old to me. The same goes for a Led Zeppelin song, or a Pink Floyd song (even though I’m not a huge fan of theirs), to name a few. Even if the Beatles song I hear is from one of their earliest albums, there seems to be an edge to it that transcends the things that make other ‘60s music “typical.” I can’t explain what that is. More sophisticated lyrics? More complicated music? I seriously doubt it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney started their band so they could meet girls. They certainly didn’t intend to shake the world and reshape the sound of music. Is it perhaps the knowledge of what they became — what they are even to this day — that colors the feel of their oldest music, not to mention songs from every phase of their existence as a band, that makes theirs feel like important music to me? I don’t think that’s it either. It seems to me a combination of everything involved in their music that made it superior — the words AND the music AND the arrangements. It seems as if they made great music that others tried to emulate and failed, rendering all the rest as typical, while The Beatles continued cutting the waters and leaving the wake that everyone else rode upon.

In an earlier post I waxed nostalgic about the old 1970s TV show, Starsky & Hutch. While it is considered seminal, the formula upon which all TV cop shows were founded for years to come, that show is clearly a product of its time and willingly reflects it. I don’t consider it — nor do I believe would anyone else consider it — timeless. It’s deeply rooted in its ‘70s-ness; kitschy, even.

How does it happen, then? Does someone write a song or a screenplay or a novel intent on making it timeless, or does it just come out that way? Is it instantly timeless, or does it take a decade or more of withstanding the years before we realize it’s just as valid today as it was when it first came out?

I’m having trouble wrapping this up. I don’t feel I’ve properly embraced the concept with words to the depth ofmy thoughts and feelings. What are some examples of timelessness for you? Any further thoughts on it?

Hater | Heart

I’ve just returned from five days in Puerto Rico, and thoughts about the place… the island, the territory, the climate and terrain…brought me to another, broader train of thought.

By now we’re all familiar with the concept of the Valentine heart as a symbol of love. First it came to represent St. Valentine’s Day, Then it passed as the romantic equivalent of a page full of words of undying love by those with the vocabulary of an orangutan. And more recently, while it still did all those other things, it also stands in graphically for the word “love” in phrases on t-shirts, placards and bumper stickers.

Now, interestingly, the symbol itself is sometimes replaced by a word that describes it instead of the word it stands for: “I Heart New York.” “Honk if you heart bean burritos!”

(Though, honestly, whenever I see the heart graphic, my brain “reads” it as “love.” Why anyone would say “I heart” anything is beyond me.)

So, suffice it to say, the Valentine heart is effectively the international symbol of love, romantic or affectionate.

But is there an equal and opposite symbol for hate? What would one choose to graphically indicate hatred for something? Perhaps the most significant and ready representation of hatred in the United States is the Ku Klux Klan, so I thought perhaps the image of the pointed white hood with eye-holes could pass as the symbol for hate. But then I realized two things: 1) the pointy white hood couldn’t pass as an international symbol because other cultures use the pointy hood of various other colors in other ways, and to use that shape to represent “hate” might cause confusion and upset in those cultures; 2) in the United States, the symbol is so racially charged as to cause upset and outrage (and rightly so) among the African-American and Jewish communities, as well as among most civilly aware Americans in general.

Then I thought of a more internationally recognized symbol, which the world came to equate with hatred, the Nazi swastika. But that comes with as much negative baggage as the KKK hood would.

Of course, there’s the overly simplistic and effortless red-circle-with-diagonal-slash symbol placed over the heart symbol, but that’s overly simplistic and effortless. Did I have to say it twice?

So what would it be? What symbol could innocuously, and without offense, symbolize harmless hatred for unimportant things like lima beans, or Fords, or the Chicago White Sox…or even Puerto Rico? Because I really hate that place. I don’t hate Puerto Ricans. On the contrary…I really like them…especially some of the women. WOW! I just can’t stand the place they come from, and where quite a lot of them still live. The climate is like taking the state of Florida on an August day and sticking it in a steam bath. The road signs are as though placed by a third-grader. The people — and I can’t sugar-coat this in any way — the people drive like idiots: 40 mph in the left lane on a highway with a speed limit of 55; merging into traffic without regard for anything hurtling down the highway at them; turning left from the right lane at a busy intersection. Out of their cars, they’re very nice, friendly people — who I can’t help but think are trying to figure out a way to get off the island. There were a couple of them — the girl at the hotel check-out desk who I couldn’t take my eyes off of, and the absolutely most gorgeous housekeeping maid I’ve ever seen in my life who instilled porn movie cliché scenarios in my brain — who I wanted to take home with me! Did I say “WOW!” yet?

But I digress.

No, actually, I don’t. I truly intended to write a post about how much I don’t “heart” Puerto Rico, but that other thing came up.

So, if you have any ideas, dear reader, for a harmless symbol to represent innocent hate, shoot it to me in my comments. I know it doesn’t have international appeal, but for now, I think I’ll go with “I ‘Chicago White Sox’ Puerto Rico.”

Starsky & Hutch and Me

There’s a TV station in Chicago that seems to play nothing but old TV shows all day. One evening a couple years ago I happened to catch an episode of Starsky & Hutch and I watched it. Or, rather, I tried to watch it.



For anyone who doesn’t remember — or who doesn’t really care to remember — Starsky & Hutch was must-see television from 1975 to 1979. At least it was must-see for me. Weekly tales about two street-smart, street-tough, big-city cops who are closer than brothers, it was the perfect TV show for an adolescent boy. Rugged, good-looking cops who don’t take shit from anybody, zipping around town in a souped-up muscle car, kicking ass and taking names, and shooting it out with the bad guys: it was the ideal recipe for the newly minted testosterone factory that was an eleven year old boy…this eleven year old boy.



I was all about Starsky & Hutch during those four years. Throughout the fall and winter, each week's most important task was making it to Wednesday night (Tuesday in the latter years of the show’s run). In the spring and summer, while the show was in reruns, I, with my black hair, was Starsky. Along with Paul, a blond kid (who else would be Hutch?) who lived across the street from me, we tore up and down the block — on his side of the street, since he was five years younger than I, and he wasn’t allowed to cross to the other side at the time — he on his Big Wheel™, and I on his yellow racing wagon, and sometimes on our bikes, we acted out our own story lines and wrote our own scripts as we went along, shooting it out with invisible bad guys and making out with invisible babes. Well… I did; at age six, Paul still got the heebie-jeebies at the thought of kissing girls.

At first, our weapons were whatever we could cobble together. If I remember correctly, I provided them in the form of two plastic, spring-loaded suction-cup dart guns, one red and one blue, in the shape of miniature Colt .45s. Then one year, for Paul’s birthday, I got him a 1:1 scale Starsky & Hutch gun set for us: the Colt Model 1911 .45 for me, and the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum for Hutch… er, I mean Paul!

I was so Starsky that I dressed like him as much as I could. Well, only one outfit, as I already had a blue windbreaker jacket. It was really simple: the windbreaker, blue jeans and a dark blue or black t-shirt. All I needed was the blue nylon-and-suede-leather running shoes with the three white stripes, and I was him! Unfortunately — and this really bothered me — my parents couldn’t afford the Adidas shoes that completely fit the description. Instead, my mom got me a pair of knock-offs, K-Mart Trax shoes that fit the description closely, but had dorky four white stripes instead of the cool Starsky three.

Starsky defined cool for me through my adolescent years, and shaped my fashion sense for quite a long while afterward…which probably explains a lot of things. Even before the TV series was canceled I outgrew playing with Paul. I was still trying to sport the cool influenced by Starsky, but a five-year age difference, to an eighth-grader, might as well be a lifetime, and I left Paul to his friends of the same age, and I turned my attentions to more teenagerly endeavors.

I was delighted, those few years ago, when I caught the beginning of an old Starsky & Hutch episode. It was a blast from the past, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me as I remembered the clothes, the realistic toy guns, Paul and his racy yellow wagon with the hollow plastic rear “slicks,” in which I could execute perfect power-slide turns…until the rear wheels split down the center, and the wagon had to be tossed….

And then the show started. Within minutes I was gagging at the dense (and I don’t mean intricate) writing, the flat acting and the preposterous story lines. I had to turn it off. I really watched this crap? And worse, I really enjoyed it?! And then I recalled the problems I had with the show, even when I was a kid. Too often the plots revolved around someone out to kill Starsky, or Hutch, or any of the regular characters; even at that age I was hung up on realism. I remember that Hutch evolved into the show’s lone heartthrob, and he always had the romantic scenes. At least that’s how I remembered it. And “Don’t Give Up On Us, Baby?” Give me a break! And the extent of their “investigations” was getting all the answers from Huggy Bear and his underworld friends, and from wild hunches they followed with bulldog conviction. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I stuck with the show through its end, in the spring of 1979.

A couple of years ago I was on a flight where the airline played the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson movie spoof of Starsky & Hutch. With much trepidation, I plugged in the headphones and took a shot. The movie hit the nail on the head of so many of the show’s flaws that I was laughing at things that only a true fan of the show would notice. I wound up laughing through most of the movie and came away nodding approval and feeling nostalgic once again for the TV show. It even has a cameo appearance by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, the original stars of Starsky & Hutch!

So last year, when I subscribed to Netflix, and I found the entire series of original TV episodes, I put season one in my queue. I’ve worked my way down to it, and this weekend I watched the pilot and the first three weekly season 1 episodes.

And? I had forgotten how gritty the show was. These were not (supposed to be) high-class cops. They were down and dirty detectives who pushed — and sometimes overstepped — the limits of law to get to the bottom of their investigations. The early episodes seem to have been written by people who had barely skimmed through the best crime novels in existence at the time, and got a lot of details wrong. For instance, in the pilot, the boys are being stalked, and the word is out on the street that a couple of hit-men are gunning for them. They confront the likeliest suspect, a high-powered criminal against whom they are to testify in court in a few days. He tells them that if they testify, he will be found guilty and — he even admits — he is guilty. BUT? He’s old. He’ll be found guilty, and then he’ll be out on bail. (On BAIL??!! After a trial?!) And then his lawyers will appeal, and the fight will drag on in the courts while he ages further. They would finally find him guilty two years after he’s dead.

Oh, well. We bought that crap 33 years ago, and the proof is preserved in the 93 episodes that followed it.

But I had forgotten about the feel of the show, and of the high-powered action it packed into each episode. And now it’s funny to see Starsky’s huge, lumbering Ford Gran Torino heaving its way sluggishly through the streets of their non-descript city with no name (I always thought they were in San Francisco, but they were not), but back then it was heart-pounding, adrenaline-dripping drama!

This weekend, as I sat watching the first four Starsky & Hutch tales, I found myself alternately intrigued, then cackling in offended disbelief at the tales and their flimsy plots, the ham-fisted fight choreography, and the visibly hasty production values. It’s a true glimpse into a part of our nation’s history: the cars on the road, the clothes the characters wear, the plot lines and elements that are today cliché. And it’s also a fantastic example of how sophisticated today’s TV shows have become — or maybe of how sophisticated today’s TV audiences have become.

But, despite it all, there's still a soft-spot in my heart for Starsky & Hutch, for the show will forever live on in the child who still dwells inside me.

Butch: The Neighborhood Dog

Isn't it funny how you can see one thing — or even one minute detail on one thing — and your mind goes back to someone, some place or thing, that your mind hadn't been to in ages? I was driving home for lunch Friday and saw a woman walking a dog. It was a mongrel, probably about 40 pounds, nothing special about it. But its brown-peppered-with-black coloring was exactly the same as Butch, a dog that had the run of our neighborhood when I was an adolescent.

Butch was a mix of just about every dog breed you can think of. I'm pretty sure he had some German Shepherd in him, some beagle, some Lab…maybe all Labs! His true owners were a family that lived two doors south of me, Steve and Renee, and their two kids, Jennifer and Stevie.

As dogs go, Butch wasn't anything special. He wasn't super bright, but he wasn't stupid, either. He never rescued a kid who fell in a well; never saved a family in their burning house. Butch was just a dog; Steve and Renee and Jennifer and Stevie's dog. But Butch was everyone's dog.

In the days when people just weren't so worked up about dogs wandering around off-leash, Butch was rarely tied up, and never kept inside. Ubiquitous defined, if kids were playing in someone's yard, Butch was there. If other neighborhood dogs were bunched together and sniffing each other's butts, Butch was right there, sniffing away. If your yard had a shady tree, Butch was there, snoozing when your yard was the coolest part of the day.

He came when just about anybody called him. He was always happy to let you pat him on the head or on his ribs. I'm pretty certain he knocked up several neighborhood bitches, much to the chagrin of their owners. Or maybe he didn't…one summer when our dog, Suzie — a cantankerous Chihuahua/Toy Collie mix — was in heat (this was also in the day when people rarely got their pets "fixed"), I happened upon a romantic moment in Mrs. Shane's front yard where Butch was inclined to get him some, Suzie was inclined to let him and I was inclined to watch. Did I mention I was an adolescent?

More than twice her size, Butch pawed at Suzie — which she didn't like too much — to get her into position. In his lust for thrust, and in his inability to actually see where she was beneath him, Butch managed to get Suzie turned around backwards and was humping her head. If I may be so presumptuous as to ascribe facial expressions to dogs, Butch's was utter bliss, as if the act of simply humping was the pleasure, and never mind the lack of penetration. Suzie literally looked over at me about 30 feet away, and I swear her expression read, Can you believe this?! I was aboard to see this comedy of errors through to the end, but I got busted by the busybody Mrs. Shane. She came out of the house and onto the porch and shamed me all kinds of ways for standing there watching two dogs do essentially nothing.

Butch's true affection — when no neighborhood bitches were on the wind — was Jennifer and Stevie. About three or four years apart in age, Jennifer and Stevie always seemed to play together, either the two of them alone, or with the rest of the neighborhood kids. And, of course, Butch was there. I never saw a situation where he felt the need to protect them, but I'm certain the thought was there, in whatever form it resides in a dog's mind. While they played with Butch, he endured and tolerated everything kids think of to do to dogs: ear- and tail-pulling, attempts to ride him, blowing in his face, wrestling with him… he just seemed to take it all in stride.

With several dogs running around the neighborhood of a warm summer day, I don't recall ever seeing any of them fight. I imagine they did, I just never saw it. All the dogs seemed to get along. Butch was "friends" with our other dog, Joshua, Suzie's only surviving offspring. Josh was, of course, part Chihuahua, and part Toy Collie, but he was also part Pekingese, thanks to Mr. Shane's purebred, which was always on a leash when it was outside, either walking with Mr. Shane or tied to the handrail post at the bottom of the stairs to Mr. Shane's apartment; Suzie brought it to him! It was fun to watch Butch and Josh play, a sort of amused look in Butch's eyes as Joshua acted tough. And, as mean as Joshua got in their play, Butch never snapped back or tried to hurt him.

I can't help but imagine that Butch sort of helped keep our neighborhood and the smaller kids safe. He was everywhere, almost everyone in the neighborhood knew him and liked him, and I think he had it figured in his mind that he belonged to everyone — or everyone belonged to him — but with a stronger affection for Steve and Renee and Jennifer and Stevie.

In case you're fearful of the sad turn in this story, I'm happy to say that there isn't one. Honestly, I can't remember what ever happened to Butch. I seem to recall that he disappeared one day, but it could just be how it seems to me in memory. I simply don't know. His existence in my memory just fades out at an unknown time under unknown circumstances. And I think that's a good thing for me. No sad memories about Butch.

Good dog!

It's A Funny Thing About Nature

A couple weekends ago I awoke on a peaceful Saturday morning to an intermittent buzzing sound. I imagined a bee or a moth outside, flapping against my bedroom window. Soft and non-threatening, I fell in and out of sleep despite the noise. Then, as I ascended to a more alert awareness…or aware alertness…I realized that the buzzing sounded like it was actually inside the window.

I rose and shuffled barefoot to the window, yanked on the venetian blinds cord and HELLO! Three yellowjackets climbed up and down the window pane, and one more lay curled and dying in the window well, against the screen.


These are the little buggers which hover around the hole in your
can and try to bogart your beer.


WTF? How did they get inside? I had the window up about four inches, but the screen was closed. Was there a gap between at the top of the screen frame where they got in?

They're the kind of window that can be removed from their track and laid flat for easy cleaning, so I laid them out and shooed the yellowjackets away. I closed everything up and chalked it up to a fluke of nature. The sun is lower in the sky and hitting the side of the building more directly, so I figured maybe the heat radiating off of the building attracted them.

The following Monday I came home for lunch. I stepped into the bedroom and noticed two yellowjackets on the floor, one dead, one almost dead. Summa-beech! HTF are they getting in here? I vowed to go buy some Raid and spray the screen and window frames to try to keep the bugs out. I did so that evening, and I sprayed the areas I thought would keep them out.

A couple days later I came home and there were more wasps on the window up high, on the inside-the-apartment side. I opened the window again and shooed them away using a hanger, expecting any moment to piss them off and get stung. I went outside and looked for any sign of a nest somewhere around my bedroom window. I'm on the second floor and, craning my neck up at the window, I noticed nothing other than that, apparently during the remodeling of my apartment building, the workers had knocked the front grille off of my wall-unit air-conditioner, and left it bent and leaning against the building.

Sunday I left for a few days in Atlanta, but not before noticing six yellowjackets walking around on the window. Fed up, I grabbed a dishtowel from the kitchen (I don't currently own a flyswatter) and took aim at one on the glass. In old boys'-locker-room form, I wound that towel into a thin weapon, cocked and snapped. POW! Direct hit! The wasp was dead before it hit the carpet! the others were on the outside of the glass, but inside the screen, so I shooed them away. I made sure to close the window before I left.

Thursday when I returned home from Atlanta and Palm Beach, Florida, I was greeted by seven wasps, most of them lying on the carpet beneath my window, most of them dead, a couple others looking like they wished they were. I surmised that the only way they could have gotten in was through the air conditioner. I sprayed a couple of the healthier ones walking on the glass, and they, joined their fallen comrades on the carpet.

Friday I came home for lunch and there were three or four more wasps inside the apartment and clinging to the glass, and another one or two dying on the carpet. I stepped back outside and looked up at the air-conditioning unit. Finally what I had not noticed earlier: a nest clinging to the side of the cooling unit inside the shell of the unit! I called the apartment management office and told the woman who answered about the nest. She seemed preoccupied and said she would send someone.

When I returned from work there were a couple more yellowjackets in my room. I figured I would wait until Saturday to see if anyone showed up before I called again.

Saturday morning I awoke to loud rustling sounds in my air-conditioner. It was around 8:30. Normally I would be perturbed about maintenance guys starting so early at my inconvenience, but if it meant I would be rid of the wasps, then so be it! Maybe he would appreciate some coffee! After a few minutes the rustling sound continued, and I thought, How long does it take to remove a freakin' wasps' nest? Then I heard a frantic chirping noise. Dat ain' right. I got up and looked out the window and saw not an apartment complex handyman braving the ravages of wasps' nest busting, but a gaggle of wild birds — sparrows, or perhaps finches — feasting on the little morsels in the wasps' nest! They were raiding the nest and eating the wasps! How cool! How serendipitously fortunate for me! Or maybe the apartment complex handyman has a gaggle of trained common birds and he sends them in to handle the dangerous part of the job so he can accomplish it and be an unstung hero!

After a while the birds left the nest alone, and I left the apartment for a few hours. When I returned around two o'clock I found two more yellowjackets on the carpet. It had been more than 24 hours since my call and the nest had still not been eradicated. I called the apartment manager's office and explained that I had called the day before about it, but nothing had been done. I told her that I would call this an emergency. I was ready to tell her that if I got stung by a wasp in my own apartment, I would not be paying next month's rent. Fortunately I didn't have to go that far. She said she would send someone right away.

About 30 minutes later, as I browsed the internet, I heard a noise that sounded like it was coming from the air-conditioner in the next room. I looked out the window in my office, but saw no handyman. Now what could it be? I went into my bedroom, and there he was…IN my bedroom! I had never heard him knock, so, with my permission to enter, he did! By the time I found him, he was already cleaning up and getting ready to leave. He had already removed the nest, put a new grille on the front outside, pulled the unit inside through the wall and cleaned it out! And then he fixed the drain plug in my "master" bedroom wash basin!

So now I'm wasp-free, I've slept three nights on my week-old bed and I got a glimpse of Mother Nature proving to me that even she hates wasps!

Instant Relief

Television advertisers hawking remedies for what ails us always seem to imply that use of their products will result in instantaneous relief from those ailments, but it’s usually not the case. Often the headache dissipates and we forget about it until we realize it’s “suddenly” gone, but it was far from instantaneous. And the common cold? Well, we all know that cold remedies aren’t really remedies at all, they’re just symptom masks that help us feel manageable until the ick finally runs its course.

Instant relief does happen though. Or, at least, it has happened to me. It truly has been rare, but there are very notable instances.

A Clear and Omnipresent Pain
It was probably 1988 or ’89. My second-oldest niece was in the high school choir and desperately wanted me to come see the Christmas concert. I had driven up from school in southern Illinois and arrived home for the holidays with a splitting headache that just. would. not. go. AWAY! I had taken some aspirin or acetaminophen before leaving school, but it just got worse and worse over the 300 mile drive. As the time to go to the concert drew near, the pain in my head was so acute I felt that I might get sick. Finally, my oldest sister asked me where in my head the pain was. I pointed to just above my right eyeball, and she said, “It’s sinus pressure.”

I was 25 years old. I didn’t know sinus pressure from a bump on the head. And besides, I hadn’t had any sinus problems before then that I could recall. She offered me a Co-Advil tablet (later reformulated as Advil Cold & Sinus). I was skeptical, as the pain reliever I had taken earlier was totally ineffective. But I popped the tablet, drank a glass of water, and lay down on the couch.

About twenty or thirty minutes later my sister came into the living room and asked me if I was going to be able to go to the concert. As I lay there, my head was still pounding. I sat up to tell her that, no, I probably wasn’t going to make it to the show.

And —POP!— A sharp pain stabbed right above my eyeball, the vibration felt behind my right nostril, and then all the pain was gone.

Just. Like. THAT.

Of course, at that very moment I thought I had just experienced a burst brain aneurysm, and I expected the lights to go out — forever — at any second. But they didn’t! Oh, if only it could be that way again! I had a headache Sunday, which I believe was caused by sleeping Saturday night on the new bed and breathing in all that new-bed factory smell that wafted around me all night, and which lasted through most of Monday. I think I have a brain tumor now. Regardless, nothing on the market since that one time with Co-Advil has ever resulted in that sudden a relief of my agony.

The headache which resulted from my niece’s choir concert, on the other hand, no medication — nor even a burst brain aneurysm — could ever soothe!

A Lot of Crack
When I was a freshman in high school I developed a lower back problem, which caused me so much pain that it often took me several seconds to get up out of a school desk, and I walked several steps doubled over before I could get fully upright. The chiropractor I was sent to said it was due to the fact that my pelvis was “out of place.” For several months I went to him every two weeks, and at each visit he had me lie face down on the table under a heat lamp, cooking my ass until he smelled bacon, at which time he would come in and perform the adjustment. The first time I went to him, I didn’t know what to expect. He had me roll over onto my back, and he pulled my one leg over the other and pinned my shoulders to the table, and then he dropped his weight onto the pulled-over leg. CRAAAACK! I could not believe how many vertebrae “popped!” Then I couldn’t figure out why he was positioning me to do the same with the other leg, because surely no more vertebrae coul -- CRAAAACK! And from that day I was hooked; every day found me stretching and twisting, and popping my back and my neck as often as I could. The pain I had then took quite a while to ease, but it finally went away. He gave me an exercise to do whenever I felt any pain or discomfort back down there, and every time I have ever felt it, a few days of doing that same exercise usually nips it in the bud.

A few years ago, however, Producer and I had a shoot somewhere in Indiana, between Chicago and Indianapolis, and we chose to rent a car — which turned out to be a Lincoln Town Car — and drive down instead of spending the same amount of time, but putting up with the hassle of flying. We drove down, the shoot went well, and we drove back. I pulled into the alley behind my house, where I was to bid Producer adieu, and he was to then take the car back to the rental place. As I turned my body to get out, I felt something pop in my lower back and I was doubled over in pain again, just like I had been in high school. After several days of doing the back stretching exercise, there was no relief.

Then, one morning as I was leaving for work, I pulled out of the garage like I always did, cranking the wheel all the way to the left, but not quite clearing the garbage cans in the alley across from the garage. Looking behind me to back up, I turned in my seat and grabbed the back of the passenger seat with my right hand. The stretch felt good, so I tried to turn my head and shoulders a little farther and — CLUNK! — Deep in my lower back something big popped, like a vertebra that hadn’t popped in many, many years! MAN! It felt incredible! And, as I sat there in the car, it seemed that the pain, which had not ceased for several days, was gone. Skeptical about that, I waited until I got to work to see. I stepped out of the car and was incredulous and pain-free! I was practically giddy the whole day.

Unfortunately, the next morning while I was brushing my teeth, I stumbled slightly over the bathroom threshold and re-wrenched my back. The grabbing-the-rear-of-the-passenger-seat method never worked again. The pain did go away, though, but it took going to a chiropractor to do so.

The Monster Within
About two years ago or so I was at work and dealing with a hyperactive draining sinus cavity. I didn’t have a cold, but the sinuses were full of crap and the post-nasal drip was driving me crazy. I went into the break room and grabbed a paper towel (as it was the closest thing at that moment) into which to blow my nose. It was the typical result, a little bit of mucus, a little bit of “stuff.” Then I took a deep, deep breath and BLEW!

KASPLORCH!

THE HUGEST glop of snot I have ever seen — EVER — exploded from my nose and into the paper towel, for which I am ever grateful to the fates for making me grab, for had it been a mere facial tissue, I would have pasted the break room cabinets with tissue-laced nose poo! My sinuses so completely cleared so rapidly that I thought I was going to pass my right eyeball through my nose! I swear I felt stuff move out from behind it! I even checked the paper towel for any specks of grey matter, just in case I had broken something in there. It must have weighed half a pound! My nose — as well as my eyesight — was for days the clearest it’s ever been!

Gross? Disgusting to retell? You betcha! But man, was it ever satisfying!

Care to share any tales of your instant relief? No worries here if it’s gross, or even more disgusting than mine. You and I are the only ones who read this blog!

Money Out, Stuff In

I learned a lesson Friday night, its importance subjective: if you're planning to write after a long day at work, and having to force it because you've found no inspiration to write in the past two weeks (well, PLENTY of inspiration, but who wants to hear about correcting your vehicle title?), DON'T have a beer with dinner.

Secondary lesson: going to bed at 9:00 pm — which is about three hours earlier than your usual — when you're really tired from a long day at work and from racking your brain over a beer to come up with SOMETHING to write can be tremendously refreshing.

Pardon My Dust
Improvements are underway. There has long been a list of things I've wanted, — material things, if you will; toys — that I am certainly aware will not make me whole, but they will help to fill the alone times with distraction. There was a small distribution from my father's estate, and a small settlement from xMrs. Farrago in the wake of the divorce, and these will make it possible to get the things I've wanted.

They're not all frivolous things, mind you. I've long wanted a tow package installed on the Xterra so that I can get a hitch-mounted bike rack and take my bike to faraway places to ride it. See? Health-conscious. Tow package installed. Bike rack purchased.

Last week for work I had to watch several Suze Orman DVDs to find a quote where she says how much and why she hates variable annuity life insurance policies. I used to watch the weekly Suze Orman show with xMrs. Farrago. It wasn't my choice, as xMrs. Farrago handled the money, and I often fell asleep before the show was over. Despite filtering for only one phrase — "variable annuity" — and trying to filter out Ms. Orman's annoying voice, a few messages got through. Prominent among them was, "Get rid of credit card debt." It wasn't a lot, but in the lean early months of the separation I leaned on the plastic for a few things. Suze's message is simple: if you have the cash, pay off the credit cards. Transfer those monthly payments to a savings or retirement account. Get rich.

Well, she didn't say that last one, but that's the idea. So, another good thing: future-conscious. Credit card debt eliminated.

And she never once mentioned variable annuity life insurance.

Back in the summer, while working to divide our finances, we sat with Margo the Bank Girl. A couple years ago, when I first met Margo, she was a plump girl, with splotchy skin, and who seemed very uncomfortable. This summer it had been about a year since I had seen her, and she was a totally different person. She had slimmed down drastically, she seemed more alert and alive…but she still has splotchy skin. She told me she had lost about 45 pounds since she had started working with a personal trainer.

Hmmm. If I know anything about myself, it's that I'm horribly unmotivated when it comes to moving muscles with any more weight on them than themselves. However, I also know that with friendly encouragement — and occasional threats of violence — I'm comfortable with supervision. I've already spoken with one personal trainer, and I'm looking into another. So, when the current spate of travel abates (I leave for Atlanta Sunday afternoon — 5 days) I will place myself at the mercy of a sadistic, muscle-bound beast — or maybe I'll work with a guy — and, hopefully, I'll come out the other side looking and feeling awesome. Naked pics here if that happens.

(Not of ME!! What are you, SICK or something?!)

I've written it and published it, so now I have to do it.

I've put myself on a cleaning schedule. HOUSE cleaning, you sick people! (still working on coming up with a shower schedule…) Rather than kill myself — and most of a day — trying to clean the whole apartment, I do one room a week. There are five rooms in the apartment: bedroom/half bath; full bath/main hallway; kitchen; living room; office. I've completed one cycle and the tidy (generally) place feels great. I've tried to police myself where clutter and piles are concerned. There are a few here and there, and in the living room there's still a gaggle of boxes of stuff I just don't have places for. But the dust is gone! I'm two weeks behind, however. Honestly, though, there's little to clean at the moment.

The new Tempur-Pedic memory foam queen bed was delivered this morning.

The coming weeks and months see possible new furniture, stereo- and computer equipment.

No, unfortunately, no upgrades are planned for the ol' Farrago blog web place space site. The only improvement possible here would be if I were to stop writing all together.

My FIRST Meme. I Mean, NOT My First Meme, But... Oh, Just Read It!

Professor, author of Babble From Babbler posted a meme that sent me off on quite a tangent (see previous post below). But now I'm doin' it!

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
Linda

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
No

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
Tastes allowed from my parents? Wine or beer. First real whole drink? Harvey Wallbanger.

4. What was your FIRST job?
United States Air Force

5. What was your FIRST car?
Red 1979 Jeep CJ-5

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
N/A

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
Me (Hey! My mind was a blank until I looked in the mirror!)

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
Mrs. Erickson

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
Back to where we started OR San Antonio, Texas

10. Who was your FIRST best friend, and are you still friends with him / her?
Patrick Powers. Technically, yes. We parted as friends when he moved away, but we've never spoken since.

11. Who was your FIRST kiss?
Just two little kids goofing around? Terri. In a relationship? Beth. With tongue and in a relationship? Linda.

12. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
Tim O.'s house down the street from me.

13. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
Editor

14. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
My second cousin, Susan's, March 17, 1973 (I still have the gift Playboy beer mug — with the date painted on it — given to the wedding party). I was 8.5 years old. I had to wear a black tux and a lavender shirt with chest and cuff ruffles. I cringe to this day at the memory.

15. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
breathed

16. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
Van Halen. Or maybe it was ZZ Top. They were one week apart and I can't remember which one I went to first.

17. FIRST tattoo or piercing?
N/A

18. FIRST foreign country you went to?
Germany

19. First movie you remember seeing in the theater?
One of my sisters dragged me along to see Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I was all of 5 years old. She must have been babysitting. I remember I was bored out of my skull and ticked because no one in the movie looked like a potato chip.

20. When was your FIRST detention?
Some time in high school. Once, maybe twice. I was a good egg.

21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?
Illinois

22. Who was the FIRST person to really break your heart?
Linda

23. Who was your first roommate?
In basic training, 21 other guys...can't remember their names. After that, a guy named Vibyral (or Vybiral?), nicknamed "Vibrator," my first real, lone roommate, in tech school in the Air Force.

24. With whom was your FIRST date?
Beth

The First Time For Just About Everything

>>>>Edited to add a second photo at the end of the post.<<<<

Professor posted a meme over the weekend at Babble From Babbler, nudging her readers to reveal the many firsts in their lives. Now, for quite a while I had been batting around the idea to relate in my blog the first time I ever flew on a plane, seeing as how it's such a huge part of my life today, but when I think back to that day I remember so clearly, I'm drawn to the reason why I remember it so clearly. It was such a momentous day in my young life, filled with so many touches of comedy, that I can't brush the whole day away just to relate my first airplane ride!

I was nineteen years and three months old on December 7, 1983. Ten months earlier I had signed my name on several dotted lines and faced the biggest commitment I had ever faced, and the biggest I would face until my marriage — Uncle Sam had wooed me with promises to show me the world and to ease my financial burden through college, and I had accepted, as much for those reasons as it was an exciting way to get out of the crazy house where I had grown up and grown restless.

With my decision, I redefined the "bookends" tag my oldest brother and I had. He was the oldest sibling, I was the youngest — both boys. And now I was following in his footsteps into the Air Force 17 years later where none of our other siblings had. I didn't choose the Air Force because that's where my big brother went. No, I chose the Air Force because my big brother talked me out of joining the Army! In my case there was no angst surrounding my decision, as it was peacetime. My big brother joined up in 1968, right in the thick of the Vietnam War. I can't imagine the turns my mother's stomach made when he made that announcement! But having volunteered, he was able to choose his career field, and he chose wisely: he didn't go to Vietnam. Hell! He never even went overseas in his 21-year career!

My family threw a party. It wasn't a huge blowout, just all the siblings — except my big brother, who called that evening to wish me well — and a few of my aunts and uncles. I finally received the Sony Walkman I had wanted for about a year or so, which I later used (and still use!) as fodder for the joke that my family "gave it to me as a going away present. They said, 'We'll give you a Walkman if you'll go away!'"

Aside from the growing feeling of tremendous apprehension, the other noteworthy memory from that evening was when Uncle Chooch — who has dealt with a stutter all his life — reached out to shake my hand. I felt him press something into my palm as he pulled my ear close to his mouth and whispered, "G-Get a b-b-blowjob!"

Accustomed to this sort of comment from Uncle Chooch, I calmly looked at the ten-dollar bill in my hand, looked up at Chooch and said loudly, "That's all it costs?!" Few people in the room — namely my sisters — caught on, but Chooch was mortified until he realized again that he was Chooch, and Chooch often said that sort of thing.

Much of the night is a blur. Mom and/or Dad took me to the train station late that evening. Mom used her monthly commuter ticket to let me pass through the turnstile, and I rode the IC (Illinois Central) Electric Line up to downtown Chicago. Off the train at the Randolph Street station, I climbed the stairs to Michigan Avenue and walked alone for several blocks south to the Americana Congress hotel. I had done the same thing in February, when I went for the initial physical at the Military Enlistment Processing Station, or MEPS. The only difference now was that, unless the doctors found something terribly wrong in my physical condition, I wasn't going back home the next afternoon…or any time soon! Along the whole walk to the hotel, I had no offers for a ten-dollar blowjob.

My biggest immediate fear was that I would oversleep and be late for my first military assignment, which was Show Up On Time. I barely slept that night as I tried to imagine how The Rest Of My Life would be from that point forward.

The next morning, after a horrid breakfast, which was the strongest cause yet for serious doubt about my choice of future, I found myself walking in a gaggle of other young people toward the MEPS. Again, much of the day is a blur. I do remember that the doctors and the processing folks weren't as stern as I had expected them to be. They were as stern as they had to be in order to get several dozen young men and women through all the examinations they needed in that one brief day.

It seemed absurd: here we were, these gangly young men (we had been separated from the women almost from the moment we stepped into the clinic), all roughly the same age, all stripped to our underwear and walking in single file from one examination station to the next. At one point we were herded into a more private room where stood two men and one middle-aged Asian woman, all in medical scrubs and white coats. One of the men barked, "Turn around, face the wall, drop your shorts…"

Mildly panicked, I looked over at the Asian woman to make sure I had correctly assessed the gender. She was a woman, all right. WHY IS SHE IN HERE? I worried. Why are they subjecting her to this embarrassment?

The barking man finished barking: "…bend over and spread your cheeks!" This is one of life's absurd moments, where dozens of thoughts and images come rushing at you at once. I first stifled a laugh as the memory came to me of my best friend, Lu, who had processed into the Marine Corps one year earlier, and related to me his own MEPS experiences, and who had created laughs in this very same moment when, upon the order to "bend over and spread your cheeks," he bent over and grabbed his face and pulled the flesh there in opposing directions — on purpose. The guys on either side of him had cracked up, and they all got yelled at. Though choking back the laugh, I didn't have the balls to repeat Lu's actions.

The next thought that occurred to me was What must this look like? Did the doctors — or whatever those people behind us were — ever imagine in their wildest dreams that they'd be there in that room at that moment looking at a bunch of assholes?

Next thought: What could they possibly be looking for?

Next thought: Cripes! That poor woman! And where the hell is she? Whose ass is she looking at? MINE?

And then I felt fingers touch my butt cheek, way off to one side and, thankfully, up kinda high. "Okay, stand up," said the other man's voice quietly to me. Very soon we were ordered to pull up our shorts and file through the next door.

I am not a needle-phobe. I can withstand the thought of getting a shot or having blood taken with only a little bit of profuse sweating and brief threats of nausea. I am not a needle-phobe; I am a needle wimp. That's why, when we were told the next station was for blood samples, I squirmed my way to the back of the line. When you are facing the agony of confronting one of your least favorite things to do, any wait seems interminable. And so did mine. Finally I approached the phlebotomist. I was the absolute last person to be poked. She stuck me, drained what seemed an egregious amount of blood (or time, rather!) into the vial, placed a cotton ball over the catheter and removed it from my vein. She said, "Put your finger on this [the cotton ball], bend your arm and don't remove it until you're told."

She sent me into the next room where all the other guys were sitting, each with one arm bent and one finger from their other hand holding a cotton ball over the little hole made by the phlebotomists' catheters. There was one chair left to sit in. I stood in front of it, bent my knees and, no sooner had my ass had hit the chair than one of the barkier technicians came in and barked, "Stand up, file out this door and drop your cotton balls in this trash can on your way out!"

I did as I was told and stepped through the door, where we filed into another hallway and stood against a wall to wait to go into the next station. One of my fellow recruits looked at me and said, "Hey, man," and pointed at my arm.

I looked down to find a long stream of blood trickling down from the tiny needle hole in the crook of my arm and curling around my forearm, and threatening to drip on the floor. The barky tech stood near one of the other techs waiting for the next room to clear. I stepped out of the line and approached him. "Excuse me. Sir?"

"You got a problem, son?" he bellowed. I don't think he was used to people getting out of his line.

I presented my blood-streaked arm and looked down. "I'm not done bleeding."

"Oh, jeez," he griped. "Come on."

I followed him back into the blood-test after-poke waiting room. He got me a cotton ball and told me to put it on my hole, and to come through with the next group.

Later in the day we were filed into the hearing test. Six or eight at a time, we were placed in a soundproof booth and told to put on a pair of headphones. Then we were told to pick up the alarm button in front of us at each listening station. We were instructed to listen for the sound of aural tones in our headphones. As soon as we heard a tone, we were to press the button and hold it until the tone stopped. Simple enough.

I parked at a station, put on the headphones and grabbed the handle at the end of the cord with my thumb poised over the button. At the first tone I pressed the button and held it. The tone grew louder and louder right up to the point where it was almost painful to my ears. And then it stopped. I released the button. This went on for about five minutes, and I was getting a headache!

Finally the technician came into the booth, walked right up to me and shouted, "CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

I must have given her quite the look. "I can hear you fine!"

With quite a bit of agitation, she grabbed my alarm button to demonstrate, and shouted, "When you hear the tone, you push the button! You hold the button until you hear the tone go away! THEN you release the button!"

"Yeah, that's what I did! It just kept getting louder."

She looked at the button. She looked at me with that "It can't be my equipment that's faulty" look. Then she said, "Go out there and get in with the last group. You have to take the test again.

When I returned to the booth for my test, she told everyone not to use the station I had used. The test commenced, and this time when I heard the tone and pressed the button, the tone faded away until it was gone, and I released the button. Afterward the tech came out and told me I had the best score of the day! She was actually quite nice. I was so glad I hadn't asked her for a ten-dollar blowjob when she was being pissy.

The end of the day was all paperwork and then we had to sit and wait until our ride arrived to take us to the airport. It was during this time of the day that I first heard the term "hurry up and wait." It would define the entire bulk of my brief Air Force career.

After what seemed like forever, we were transported to the airport where we were simply travelers. We were booked on a Delta Airlines flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and from there on another plane to San Antonio.

This wasn't the first time I had flown. My friend Sam's father was a one-fourth owner of a Cessna single propeller engine, four-seater plane, and had his pilot's license. One day he asked me if I wanted to go for a fly. He took Sam and me up, allowing me to fly briefly, showing me how to operate the rudder and the ailerons together in order to execute a turn. It was fun, but it was very brief.

It was the first time I had flown commercially. As I and my fellow Air Force recruits boarded the Delta Airlines plane, I was pretty excited. At day's end I found myself with people who not only had the same service entry date, but who were headed to the same place I was.

I like to believe I'm a pretty funny guy. I usually try to make people around me laugh, and sometimes I succeed. There are times, however, when I hit a groove and I can't miss. On the plane to Dallas, in the minutes before takeoff, while the plane was still boarding, I was hitting home run after home run. I had my peers rolling, as they were spread around me. I even had some of the "normal" passengers going. I can't for the life of me remember most of what I said. All I know is that my excitement was at a fever pitch. I was trembling and sweating, but energized, and every funny thought that came to my head translated into funny words.

The only thing I remember saying was when the plane had taxied to the runway. We sat there for a few seconds, and then the pilot locked the brakes and revved the engines for take-off. The whole body of the plane rocked as if in eager anticipation of flexing its muscles and hurtling us down the runway. The roar of the engines got louder and more insistent as the brakes held us fast. Then, really loudly, I said, "He's gonna pop the clutch!" All the people in the seats around me — recruits and "normal" travelers alike — erupted in laughter!

All of that came to a screeching halt when we got to San Antonio, where the real consequence of signing our names on those dotted lines waited for us.

As I travel now, I often see young people in groups with manila envelopes in hand, staying together in a cluster. I know from my own experience that these young people are retracing my very own footsteps of two decades ago. It always strikes me that these kids all seem to know each other really well. It took this reminiscence for me to see it clearly: friends are made quickly in such a situation. At MEPS — or whatever it's called today — young men and women headed for all the branches of service are huddled together for their exams, but go their separate ways to their respective services when that first day is done. Those headed to the same branch of service, to the same basic training schools, are together embarking on an adventure from the same starting point. They are sharing an identical experience, but through wildly divergent perceptions, and they come quickly to rely upon each other for reassurance and leadership in a shared, frightening, exciting new experience. Little do they know that, once they get to their destination, they may never speak to each other or see each other again for the rest of their lives, even though in those first few weeks they're sometimes in as close proximity as a few yards from each other.

And then I see it in my memory: the fast, close friendships we formed from the hurry-up-and-wait of MEPS to the what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into of the first few hours of basic training. I still remember some of their names: Brendan Ryan, Dan Colwell, a young black guy named McFadden (I think), and a girl named Tanya. All the guys were in my same basic training flight, and throughout that class there was a tighter bond between us than we had with any of the other guys from all over the country. Tanya wound up stationed at the same base I was — Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana. We went on a date there, saw Ghostbusters and no sparks flew. With a few exceptions in passing, we never saw each other again.

There were a lot of firsts in that my first day as a member of the United States armed services. It is often said that you always remember your first time.

So true.

A Measure of a True Friend

It was Thursday, the day before our trip to Madrid. We had seven cases full of video production equipment that we needed to register with U.S. Customs in order that we would not be charged a duty on them when we brought them back into the country. Editor was slammed to the wall with another project he had to get done before the end of the day, and he had to get home to take care of some errands that afternoon, as well as some the next day, as he was not coming in to the office, but rather going straight to the airport to catch our 4:00 flight.

Editor is a year older than I am. He came on board here about three years ago after a long stint as a freelancer with us. He had been a co-owner of a video production business with two other guys until that business went tits up, and officially folded about a year ago. He’s had a rough go of it financially and is under a lot of pressure before he even gets to work each day. He and I had a rough start, he thinking I didn’t like him, but he’s a really funny guy who has a colorful past with rich stories that he tells with such comic flair that people listening to him are in stitches from laughing so hard. Over the years he’s been on staff, we’ve formed a decent relationship, and I’ve considered him a friend rather than just a co-worker.

I had originally intended to make the trip to the Customs office in the morning, but there were a few items still undetermined, and I was procrastinating a little bit. I had planned to pick up the matador costume on Thursday, as well, but the shop doesn’t open until 11:00. As most of the morning slipped out of my grasp, I decided that I would make the Customs run right after lunch. Editor was a little concerned with how much time it was going to take me because he had hoped to head home by 2:00, and I couldn’t tell him how long it was going to take me.

I left to go home for lunch. It’s a ten-minute drive for me to get to my apartment from the office. I’m then literally about three minutes from the Northwest Tollway, which is practically a direct shot, 20-minute drive to the airport and the area where the U.S. Customs office is located. On my way home, Producer called me and told me that Owner (of the company) insisted that we bring the bulky, heavy power transformer with us, which meant that we would have to cough up another case to put it in. So I hurried through my lunch and headed back to the office where I looked over the power transformer and determined that there was no serial number on it, so therefore no need to register it with Customs, and therefore my return to the office was a trip — and time — wasted.

Then I left the office around 1:30 with only a vague memory of how to get to the Customs office, though a very clear memory that around the same time last year I had one hell of a time finding it! After wasting about 15 minutes trying to jar my memory, I received a phone call from Editor asking me how it was going and how soon I would be back with his laptop and the cases he needed to carry to the airport the next day. I told him I was having trouble finding the Customs office and, depending on if the officer wanted to look at every last item, worst case was two hours.

Editor swore. Not necessarily at me, but at his dilemma. “I gotta get out of here. I got things I need to do!”

I said, “I know. There’s just no telling how long it’s going to take.”

“God! I wish you had left this morning, like you said!”

Editor was getting very agitated and impatient. I felt badly for him that the day hadn’t gone as I had hoped. I finally used directory assistance to call the Customs office and got directions on how to get there. Add to it all the rain from the tropical depression that had been Hurricane Gustav and the eighth straight hour of steady rain that had fallen on us, which made everything move at about 2/3 speed. I got to the service window at Customs and faced a very young, fairly timid-looking officer.

Last year, performing the same task before a trip, I had arrived at the same Customs office under the mistaken impression that I just needed the serial numbers of the items we were taking overseas, and not the items themselves. A youngish veteran officer had scolded me, saying that I had to show him I had the items, otherwise how would he know we didn’t have a nefarious plan where my henchmen overseas just told me the serial numbers of the items I was going to illegally import into the country? So I had to return to the office, get all the gear and bring it back to Customs where I returned to the window and faced a different, older, wizened officer who, while I waited to ask him where to bring all the gear, looked over the forms I had filled out in front of the other officer, and then he signed the forms, said, “Thank you!” and sent me on my way! He never even looked at the stuff! BOY! was I pissed off!

With the rain pouring down as it was, I was close to actual prayer that the young officer would just rubber stamp the forms and send me on my way. I could tell he wanted to. He didn’t want to make me go out in the rain to get all that stuff and, most of all, he didn’t want to stand there and check off every last item of stuff on my list! He looked out at the rain. He looked over his shoulder at his superiors. He looked at the list. He heaved a big sigh. “You have all the stuff here?”

“Yes,” said I.

He looked at his superiors again, who were otherwise oblivious to him. He heaved another sigh. “Okay. You’re gonna have to bring it all in here.”

Crap.

As I unloaded the gear onto a cart on the first trip out to the car, unsuccessfully trying to avoid getting soaked by Gustav, my phone rang. It was Editor asking me again how much longer I would be.

“They’re gonna look at everything,” I told him. I looked at my watch: 2:30. “My guess, it’s another twenty to thirty minutes before I’m headed back to the office.”

Meltdown.

“AAAAAAAAHHHGOD DAMN IT! I got SHIT to do! Jesus fucking CHRIST!” He ranted for several more seconds. “This is fucking up my whole day! You should’ve done this in the morning!”

He was my friend, but now I was pissed off. I didn’t have to take all the gear to Customs. The gear that he was waiting for I could have left for him to take to Customs on his own. I was the one standing in the rain. I was the one unloading and reloading the car for two trips into the Customs office. I was the one driving with the idiots on the road who acted as though they had never seen drops of water falling from the sky.

I bit my tongue and said none of that. I simply said, “I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“Well,” I said, “the longer you keep me on the phone, the longer it’s gonna take me to get back.”

>CLICK<

He hung up on me! One of my biggest pet peeves! You can get angry with me. You can say mean things to me. You can even accuse me of lying, incompetence or apathy, but hanging up on me signals your unwillingness to communicate, and is just plain fucking rude!

The Customs officer verified all the serial numbers with the items that bore them in the first batch of cases. I returned to the car, swapped the cleared cases with the uncleared and returned to the officer. He verified everything there, and I reloaded the car and headed back to the office. It was just after 3:00, and I was seething.

I worked my way to the Northwest Tollway and immediately found myself socked right in the middle of a huge, Gustav-coated traffic jam. As I crawled along in traffic I had several imaginary conversations with Editor, alternately speaking calmly or screaming at him while I glared out the windshield. I was gonna let him have it with both barrels when I got to the office: “Since when is it all about YOU? Who the fuck was traipsing around in the rain, dragging your shit all over the place, getting the gear cleared for YOU? I could’ve left this for you to do on your own, and THEN what would you do with your precious fucking time?!”

My windshield was practically dripping with saliva.

I got to the office and carried his laptop bag in and set it down inside the front door. I found him in an edit suite talking to one of the other editors. He saw me and rolled his eyes and raised his arms and slapped his thighs, wordlessly saying, “Finally! What the hell took you so long?!”

I thought the better of saying everything I had come up with on the drive from the Customs office, as there were co-workers all over the place. And it was probably best that I wait until I had calmed down or there might have been fists and a call to the police! So I said bluntly, “Your bag is up front,” and I headed back out to the car to pull it around back to unload the rest of the gear, forgetting that he was taking half the cases home with him.

He followed me out to the car and was being all nice and asking me calmly which cases I wanted him to take. I told him that it was whatever he could fit into his compact sedan. As it was still raining, he backed his car to within a few feet of mine. I opened the rear hatch of my car, an SUV, and the handtrucks that I had used to load the cases into and out of the Customs office, and which I had stowed on top of the cases in the car, slid out unexpectedly. I reached up reflexively with my left hand and tried to stop the handtrucks, but the bottom lift blade(?) caught my thumb and gouged a chunk of skin out of it, as well as crashing into my right thigh. My anger boiled over to rage and I grabbed the handtrucks and flung it across the parking lot with a roar.

He loaded his car with all he could take, and I put the (now slightly damaged) handtrucks back into mine and pulled around to the loading dock, where I unloaded the rest of the gear into our warehouse.

The next morning there was a mild panic as Owner called from San Diego telling me to bring yet more crap (the infamous disappearing teleprompter case!) with me to Madrid. As our client insisted on booking our tickets, we wound up flying on American Airlines, with which neither Editor nor I have any status. And, with all the new airline rules, we were limited to a maximum of five bags each. So now, with the power transformer and the teleprompter monitors added, I was maxed out at five bags. I wasn’t sure how many he had, so I called him.

I was still feeling a little pissed off at him, and I intended to confront him at the airport about the previous day’s incident, only calmly. I intended to tell him that I value our friendship, and I realize that he was acting out of frustration, but he can’t treat me that way and not expect me to be upset or angry with him. But at the moment, I was still ticked. He answered the phone and, trying only to sound matter-of-fact, I told him of the extra case we had to carry, anticipating him to groan and moan about it. Instead, he said, “Knock it off with the attitude! I got enough shit going on right now, and if you’re gonna give me attitude, I swear to god I’ll hang up the phone.”

I said, “What attitude? I’m just telling you about the new wrinkle. We have to carry more crap!”

That defused the bombs each of us was ready to lob at each other, and I strengthened my resolve to have it out with him at the airport as civilly as I could muster.

A quick check-in and $650 in excess baggage fees later, I waited for Editor to get to the airport to help him with bags if he needed it. He wound up checking in at a different counter than I had expected him to, and only realized he was already checked in when I saw a skycap wheel past me on a cart the gear Editor had checked.

I went through security and made my way to the gate. I saw Editor there and I took a huge breath and walked to him. I sat down.

And Editor said, “Hey, before I say anything else I just want to say that I’ve been under a ton of stress — and it’s no excuse, I know — but I let it get out of control yesterday, and I acted selfishly and said things I never should have said, and I held you responsible for things that were out of your control. So, I apologize for acting the way I did yesterday. There’s no excuse for the way I treated you, and I’m sorry.” It was heartfelt, it was sincere, and he looked in my eyes the entire time.

For a few seconds I just blinked at him and resisted the urge to say, “Wow!”

Then I said, “I’m really glad you said that.” I gave a version of my “I value our friendship” speech, and I told him that it really means a lot that he faced up and apologized.

And I don’t think I can emphasize enough how really much it means to me. It takes quite a lot of introspection of a person to take a step back from who one is or what one has been doing and acknowledge that one has acted selfishly or boorishly toward someone else. It certainly takes a lot more than most people, it seems, are willing to give. Too many of us think only of ourselves and say or do things that unnecessarily hurt others. We even sometimes know that what we’ve said or done has caused harm or pain to someone, and it even bothers us that we’ve done it, but we just don’t have the balls to admit it and own up to it and apologize. Editor is not an abusive person. He’s a great guy, fun to be around. Like anyone else, he has his weak moments, but like no one else — or few I’ve known — he has the presence of mind to know when his weaknesses affect those around him, and he has the self-respect to make amends to those he has let down.

At a point where I thought our friendship had been dealt a serious blow, I came away feeling instead that it had been greatly strengthened.

When I have my weak moments and I have let down those around me, may I have the ability to recognize those moments with the same fortitude and dignity.

D I V O R C E D

Actually.

Legally.

Finally.

I've Been to Spain, But I've Never Been to ME (Maine, That Is!)

This most recent trip was shaping up about a month ago to be a bad one. First off, it was an overseas show, which always increases the stress level. Second, our sister company, which handles all of the road gear, had neglected to notify us when the truck was leaving their warehouse for the freight forwarder's, and we were stuck with carrying absolutely everything we needed to take with us for the candids. And then we got word that the shipment of gear had been held up somewhere, either stuck on an ailing ship, or entangled in red tape in Spain Customs.

September 4, 2008 • Thursday
The storm that was once called Gustav oozed in over Chicago, dumping a steady downpour for the entire day. I had intended to head over to a costume shop to pick up a matador costume to use in a couple of gags we planned for the candids video, as well as to head to the US Customs office to register all the electronics gear we were taking. After frittering the morning away, I went to lunch, intending to head straight for the Customs office afterward. On my way to lunch I got a phone call by one of my coworkers telling me that the owner of the company (from this point referred to as "Owner") — who was on another show in San Diego — told him that we needed to definitely bring the bulky, heavy power transformer with us (Spain — and all of Europe — run on 220 volt, 50 Hertz power, whereas the US runs on 110V, 60Hz. Unless an electrical appliance is engineered to run on either system, you can't plug it in to the one it's not designed for without it running improperly or destroying it). I told that coworker to pull it out for me and I would stop back at the office and bring it with me to US Customs.

When I got to the office I saw that the transformer had no serial number, so there was no need to register it with US Customs. Trip wasted.

I headed to US Customs based on a spotty memory of the last time I was there…and I got lost. Not LOST; I knew exactly where I was, but I couldn't remember how to get to where I needed to go. Finally, after calling and getting directions, I arrived.

When you're leaving the country for any length of time it is advisable that you register with US Customs any item of value that you're taking with you and intending to bring back with you, such as laptops, cameras, iPods or other personal electronics. Should you be stopped upon re-entry to the USA and be unable to prove you carried such items out of the USA with you, you will be charged an import duty. Registering the items prior to the trip is your proof.

Last year the veteran Customs officer I spoke with pretty much rubber-stamped my papers without asking to see the half-ton of crap I had with me. This time, however, it was a very young officer who, though he seemed reluctant to tell me to bring everything in, kept looking at the veteran officers with apprehension (and fear of reprimand?), made me bring everything in. So, after two round trips out to my SUV in the pouring rain, hauling every heavy case out and onto a wheeled cart, pulling out every single electronic piece of equipment with a serial number and repacking it, and returning everything to the car, I was soaked and more than a little frustrated.

After a heated tangle with another coworker (heretofore referred to as "Editor") (more on that in a future post), we divided up the cases and left for the day. I called the costume shop, where I had one week earlier reserved the matador costume, and told them I would pick it up the next day.

September 5, 2008 • Friday
There I was, on my 44th birthday, preparing to leave to work for a week in Spain. The next crisis hit early: Owner now needed someone to locate and carry two teleprompter monitors to Spain. Our equipment guy was already in Spain, and I had no idea where to find any monitors even if we had them. We called to a local freelance prompter operator, but he was on a job and in session, so he was out of reach until at least noon. I had to leave for the airport at 1:00. I also had to pick up the matador costume at 11:00, when the costume place opened.

Stress was very high until Owner called back and said that he had gotten in touch with the equipment guy who told him that there was a case with three LCD flat-panel prompter monitors on the truck parked behind our building, waiting to go on to the next show the following week. We got the case off the truck, I picked up the costume and I headed to the airport. Owner told me that the LCDs were needed as a backup in case the shipment indeed failed to arrive in time

I normally fly United Airlines, where I have the vast majority of my air miles and, thus, Elite status. Where United allows me to check three bags at no extra charge, American Airlines, where I have no status, allows me one bag free, a second bag at $25, and then $100 for each additional bag, with a limit of five bags total. Then add a charge for three of the five bags being over 50 pounds, and my trip cost an additional $650!! And Editor, my travel partner, had four bags, setting us back another $550. Let's hear it for the company credit card! YEAH!

There was a minor delay in boarding the flight, and due to our lack of any status, Editor and I were among the last to board. Fortunately for me, it was not filled to capacity, so I had a vacant seat next to me.

September 6, 2008 • Saturday
We connected through London Heathrow airport to a British Airways flight to Madrid, landing sometime around 1:00 in the afternoon. Two of our 9 cases failed to make the trip with us: my tripod and the case with the three LCD flat-panel teleprompter monitors. I was given every assurance they would be delivered to my hotel.

We checked in to our rooms at the hotel, and then we hired a taxi to take the candids gear to the venue — the Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes — a mere five-minute walk from our hotel…and a six-minute cab ride. The Circulo Bellas Artes is apparently an old theater that is used by the president and the queen to hold official state functions. Judging by the condition and appearance of the place, you'd think raves were held there. It is grimy, run-down and underequipped for modern events. There's no loading dock — trucks load out through the main entrance on a side street, through the lobby and on elevators the size of a matchbox. Either the Spaniards have a much higher tolerance for heat and humidity than the rest of the humans on the planet, or the building's air conditioning is in need of serious repair. Other than that, everything is great.

We got our gear into the room set aside as our edit suite, and reported to the show crew in the auditorium. There we learned that the shipment had finally cleared whatever difficulty it had encountered, and would be arriving the next morning; my missing LCD monitors case was now, thankfully, redundant. We took a walk to scout the area around our hotel and discovered a large square filled with tables and people, surrounded by bars and restaurants. We grabbed an early dinner at what turned out to be a tapas bar, learning at that moment that 1) no one outside the hotel and the airport speaks English at all; 2) Spanish food is drastically different from food I've encountered anywhere else in Europe. Yeah, the language thing is my fault, I know. In the hours before I left I couldn't find the two Spanish phrase books I bought a couple years ago. The food? Wow! It's a good thing I'm culinarily (it's a word (really)) adventurous. Editor, unfortunately, foresaw a long week of fasting.

We returned to our rooms at the hotel and I fought off sleep as long as I could, finally succumbing to the jet lag at 8:00pm.

September 7, 2008 • Sunday
I awoke around 1:30am. Hearing voices outside in the street, and having learned that the Spanish are culturally night owls, I got dressed and headed out into the night. I returned to the large square I had seen at dinner time and found it to be humming with activity. People of all ages — even parents with four or five-year-old kids — were out in the crowd, talking, laughing, drinking. There were many young people in their 20s standing in groups and socializing. It seemed that I got out there just as the bars were preparing to close up: workers were stacking chairs and gathering tables, some were shuttering their windows and doors, but the crowd stayed put. After about an hour of walking around, my feet were getting sore, so I headed back to the hotel where I checked e-mail, flipped through the TV channels for a while and, around 5:00, went back to sleep.

I awoke again at 8:00 and prepared for the day. The bell desk called me and said that my luggage had arrived, however, when the bellman came to thedoor, he had only the tripod. The LCD monitor case had not been delivered. I spoke with the concierge, who then called British Airways baggage handling at the airport, and they said it would be delivered the next day. Hmmm.

Editor and I walked in a different direction from the hotel than we had done the previous afternoon, scouting now for locations to shoot for their scenic qualities. Around the corner from the hotel we found the Neptuno fountain, on the roundabout. Five minutes walking from there led us to another fountain on another roundabout right by the main train station. We grabbed breakfast at a café chain called Faborit, where the young man behind the desk spoke some English, saving me from ordering the bull penis sandwich, or something possibly as hideous. The sandwich was great (it looked and tasted like salami, so I'm assuming it was salami), the chocolate croissant was fab, and the café Americano was superb.

Next we boarded an open-top tour bus and shot as many sights as we could throughout the entire loop, scouting for other places we might want to shoot from ground level. For lunch we tried to find a place that appeared palatable to Editor, but defaulted to a McDonald's near the train station.

After exhausting ourselves on the scenic shooting, we refreshed in our rooms and then headed out for dinner, failing again to find a restaurant, instead winding up at a tapas place. The choricitos (think chorizo smoky links) casserole I ordered was okay, but the vegetable casserole Editor ordered was not very appetizing…even to me! Apparently, cazuela, the Spanish word for casserole, simply means "food served in a bowl," and does not involve noodles , cheeses or sauce. On the way back to the hotel we walked past an Italian restaurant that looked promising, and vowed we would go there Monday evening.

September 8, 2008 • Monday
By morning there was still no sign of the LCD monitors. I spoke again with the concierge, who promised me he would call British Airways. I had discovered a Faborit right across the street from the hotel, so I ate breakfast there. Editor told me that he had a rough night trying to sleep (I was able to sleep pretty much the whole night through, from about midnight until 6:00), and that he was going to try to sleep a little longer. He didn't have much to do that morning, so there was no problem with it.

I walked to Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes and right into a news event. I saw a throng of video cameramen rushing forward toward a person right at the main entrance to the theater. I noticed a man in front of me wearing a suit, with a clear plastic coiled cord snaking out of his collar at the back of his neck and running up to his ear. Security. I didn't recognize anyone as famous, but I did see a couple of female reporters with microphones. I walked around the throng of people and into the theater, expecting at any moment to be shouted at in a language I don't understand, and then shot in the back.

Once inside the theater lobby I headed for the woefully small elevators, only to be cut off by two men scrambling from the throng to secure the cars. Within seconds the throng was swarming to the elevators, so I gave up and headed for the stairs.

Did I mention that our edit room was on the fifth floor? And did you know that, in Europe, the ground floor is usually labeled as zero, making the fifth floor truly five floors above? And, did I mention that the floors of Teatro Circulo Bellas Artes are somewhere near double the height of normal floors? Somewhere between the third and fourth floors I was sucking wind like a fucking shop vac, my legs had gone numb and I thought I was certainly going to have a heart attack. I took a brief break to catch my breath, and then I labored my way up to the fifth floor. And you know what? I beat the reporters in the elevators!

I retrieved the betacam from the edit room and headed back to the hotel, where the arriving attendees would be registering for their week of meetings and food and fun.

One of the travel staff people told me that the Italian restaurant Editor and I had passed the night before had great food, and definitely recommended it. After I shot all I needed of registration and brought the tape to Editor at the theater, I had only little more than an hour before the Welcome Dinner started, where I had to shoot some more….but not eat…because the client doesn't feed us. I had hoped to hit the Italian restaurant, but Editor wasn't ready to eat at that time, preferring to get caught up on the candids video to the point that he had used everything he needed from my shot tapes.

So I went to the other restaurant the travel staff person had mentioned, a place called VIPS, just around the corner and actually in the same building as the hotel. She had said it was kind of like a Denny's. I went in and discovered a little convenience store at the front, with the restaurant seating wrapped around it. I had the breaded hake and a tasty greens salad. And no tapas.

September 9, 2008 • Tuesday
Jet lag, for anyone who's never experienced it, is an interesting affliction. It's the result of the sudden disruption to your sleep cycle caused by rapid travel to another time zone. The further removed from your home time zone, the wackier the disruption. You may feel during the day that you've finally adjusted — you're able to stay awake and not feel fatigued — but at night, no matter how tired you feel at bed-time, you wake again after only an hour or two, and sleep is hard to come by. Madrid is seven hours ahead of Chicago. Even putting off going to bed until midnight (damn blogs!), it was still only 5:00pm on my body's clock. That's nap time, at best. And a nap is what I got. I awoke at 1:00am and lay there for about an hour before feeling sleepy again.

One of the stresses added by an overseas show is the fact that I am always called upon to run camera during the show. We record all of the stage portions of our shows for whatever use the client may wish to make of it. It increases my stress level on site because it takes away or severely limits my ability to complete the other tasks I'm responsible for beyond shooting the candids. And, besides that, I hate it. The call Tuesday morning was 6:45am. Owner asked me about the LCD monitors and told me that it was crucial that they arrive today, and if we didn't have them by 2:00, it would be a "disaster." WTF?! Just yesterday they were redundant!!

I asked the concierge yet again to call about the LCDs case, and he told me once again that British Airways said the case was "on the truck." I told him that they had said that yesterday and the day before, and yet nothing was delivered. Then he told me that he would call again, but not until 8:00, when the baggage office opened.

Back at the theater I left a note for Editor (none of us has international calling on our cell-phones, so it was back to 20th Century communications) telling him of the now dire circumstances the missing LCDs posed, and asked him to go back to the hotel and make sure the concierge called about the LCD monitors.

Aside from the oppressive heat that the newly purchased fans placed all around the theater just blew around, the general session went without a hitch. Several locals were hired to act as ushers for the meeting. Two among them were stunning, attractive young women. I was stuck behind a camera, so all I could do was look at them. One of them made eye contact and smiled at me frequently enough to distract me from my work (okay, that doesn't take much)!

Immediately after the general session was over, I was ordered to strike the camera I had operated for the session in order for it to be used as the camera providing the big screen image at the awards dinner that evening. There ensued a great deal of confusion, as the other camera operator had to break away to assist with the technical aspects of some educational seminars — called breakouts — while Equipment Guy was already at the award dinner venue — La Quinta del Jarama — thirty miles away setting up there. Some of the breakout equipment was needed at La Quinta del Jarama, as well as some of the stage equipment, including those missing LCD monitors!

I ran upstairs to see what Editor found out, and he said that he had to get ugly in order for the concierge to call British Airways and investigate. It turns out that the baggage office's records showed that the case was on a truck, but it was actually still in their warehouse. They assured the concierge that it would be on the truck and delivered by noon.

I ran to the hotel around 1:00 and up to my room, as the case had my name on it, and that's where the hotel would deliver it. At last, the LCDs had arrived. I called a bellman to cart the case to the front entrance, where I got a taxi to take me and the case back to the theater. It started to rain.

By 4:00 all the gear that needed to go to La Quinta was ready to be loaded into two vans that would also carry nine of us. I brought my candids camera, as the awards dinner is one of the events we cover for the video. I had batteries, a camera light and one tape loaded in the camera. As the show camera and tripod were loaded into the van, I asked the technical director (TD) if he had loaded the control unit and control (power, video, data) cable for the camera. He looked at me like I was stupid and told me that we were using my camera's power supply with it. Well that was news to me! My power supply was still up in the edit room!

I ran back into the theater, rode the elevator up to the fifth floor and retrieved the power supply and cables for my camera. The catering crew that had served lunch to the attendees on the second floor of the theater building were clogging up the elevators, and where I had lucked out in catching one for the ride up, I could not afford the time it was taking for a car to reach the fifth floor for the ride down. I decided to take the steps. I was headed down after all. No fatigue to worry about.

I zipped down past the fourth floor. Somewhere between floors four and three, two cleaning ladies were busy at work, mopping the stairs! I hit the landing between four and three, and my left foot went wiggy on the wet marble floor. After a brief struggle to stay upright, I felt it better to just drop onto my ass. It would take less time than the Stay On My Feet dance, and I was less likely to get hurt. So down I plopped, and immediately from the stairs below I heard a woman gasping, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" She had heard me fall and came running up the stairs, horrified that I had fallen. I got up and assured her in a language she doesn't understand that I was unhurt. Meanwhile, the lady wielding the mop looked up at me in frozen bewilderment. I continued down the stairs, much more gingerly now, and climbed into the van.

I prepped the camera at La Quinta, and then was told that we would run two cameras for the program, which meant that Owner would call the other camera guy, who thought he had the evening free, to grab the other tripod from the auditorium and hop on the attendees bus to get to La Quinta.

It was at this point that I wondered why this was all so incredibly unorganized. We've done this sort of thing for years, and never has it been such a clusterfuck. I still don't know the answer.

We managed to pull off the recording of the dinner program without it looking like we were as disorganized as we were. And then, only a couple hours after we set it up, we tore it all down and left.

September 10, 2008 • Wednesday
It had rained most of the day Tuesday, so to awake around 1:30 Wednesday morning to what sounded like pouring rain was somewhat of a surprise. I feel that, had the noise not woken me, I would have been able to sleep through the night. But then it sounded like someone knocked on my window. Not an insistent rapping, but one loud knock. And then another, followed sporadically by others of varying intensity. Then, as I became more awake and curious, I thought, "Is that hail?"

I rose and opened the curtains. Sure enough, golf ball-sized stones were falling amid the raindrops! The hail dissipated after a few minutes, but the rain continued.

After another hour, I was able to sleep again.

It was another early call, but the morning session was only an hour before the attendees went off to breakouts the rest of the morning. I did call over to me one of the gorgeous women with whom I had made eye contact the day before. Her name was Angela. Now I had always thought Spanish to be kind of a sexy language, but when she told me her name, her pronunciation kinda ruined it for me. Mexican Spanish pronounces the 'G' in her name as English pronounces the 'H.' "AN-hel-ah." But Spanish Spanish, at least in the Madrid region, pronounces the 'G' much more harshly, and when Angela told me her name, she sounded like she was hacking up a loogie. But she understood little more English than "What's your name?" and spoke even less, so I was relegated to just looking at her, smiling and, no doubt, creeping her out.

While the breakouts were in session, Producer, who had arrived from San Diego Tuesday morning and was a zombie all day, worked with me to shoot some "funny" gags and skits. We finally put the matador costume to use.

After the breakouts, the attendees returned to the auditorium. I saw the other gorgeous usherette and called her over. She spoke just a bit more English and told me her name is Eva, which, in Spanish, sounds like "EH-fa." At least I didn't worry about getting phlegm on my shirt. Eva was actually damn funny, because, when the man speaking on stage put up a photo of one of his colleagues, his mentor and hero, she came up to me and whispered into my ear "Michael Douglas!" And that's exactly who the man in the photo resembled! I laughed silently behind the camera, nodded to her my concurrence, and fell madly in love with her.

After the session I bolted for the hotel with the betacam in hand. I went to my room and changed into a pair of shorts and headed down to shoot more gags for the video. Then I embarked on the walking tour of medieval Madrid. It was a fairly excruciating walk, considering I had to carry a 20 pound camera for three hours and an untold number of miles. It was a fascinating tour, however, and Yolanda, our tour guide had a really nice ass.

Toward the end of the walk, the attendees started breaking off, some to eat an early dinner, some to go shopping, some to explore a little more on their own. Before long, the only people left were Yolanda and me! We still had about a half-mile to go to get back to the hotel, and we talked most of the way. Earlier in the tour Yolanda had asked me how much the camera weighed, and I guessed at the conversion to kilograms to be around seven or eight. She asked to hold it to see, at which point I jokingly said, "See ya later!" and walked off like I was abandoning her with it. She guessed it to be about 9 kilograms, which, upon checking it accurately, is correct.

Anyhoo, on our walk alone back to the hotel, she asked me, "So what do you do now? Go have a beer?"

And I said, "Wow! A beer would be great right now. You wanna go have a beer with me?"

HOLY SHIT! I asked her out without even thinking about it!

She laughed out loud…really loud… I don't know if that's a good thing or not… and she declined, saying she had stuff to do at the hotel.

I said goodbye to her at the intersection I needed to cross in order to get to the theater, and headed up to the edit suite. Neither Editor nor Producer were there, as they were still out on the activities they had to shoot. I returned to the hotel and chilled in my room for a while, as I had the evening free.
I had hoped my coworkers would call me or come to the hotel to get me for dinner, but by 8:00 I started to doubt they would do that. I headed back to the theater and discovered that they had gone to Burger King and were chowing down in the edit suite. That's okay…they had work to do. I headed straight for the Italian restaurant I had waited two days to get to. I was seated near an attendee couple who, within a few minutes, asked if I was part of their group. I told them I was on the video crew, and that started a conversation. Then they suggested I pull my table up against theirs, and we had dinner together.

September 11, 2008 • Thursday
It was another one-hour session, then off to breakouts, and back for another hour, ending the final session around 1:30pm. The candids shooting was finished on Wednesday, after the activities, so I was free to be used to help strike the stage. The general session was over, now, and all that was left was the final night dinner party, this time at yet another venue, the Florida Park restaurant in the Parque de Retiro.

I broke for a quick lunch and changed into the pair of shorts I had brought with me to the theater. I wore the white t-shirt I had worn under my dress shirt.

I was on hand along with about six local hands and a couple of our guys (TD and the other camera op) to dismantle the cameras and the large center screen above the stage. It took about three and a half hours to complete, and as soon as that was done, I had to pack my camera and the tripod to take over to Parque Retiro in order to record the presentation they had planned over there. It was another bit of a clusterfuck as our hands and the loaders were trying to get all our gear down through the teensy elevators while the rest of the theater's employees tried to do their usual things while using the elevators. While they were loading the truck to take our gear to the freight forwarder's, we, the candids crew were packing our gear to take to our hotel (and I, of course, to go to the evening venue).

When all of the candids gear was packed, Editor and Producer and I hailed a cab with three large cases with my gear in them, and a small DVCAM VCR to head over to La Florida at Parque de Retiro. The taxi dropped us off and we were flummoxed. Parque de Retiro is a huge park! No signs, no arrow, no guide pointed toward the restaurant. We were essentially lost. Producer pointed off in the direction to our left and said, we should go that way. Editor and I said that we're not traipsing all over the park on a wild goose chase while carrying these heavy cases (Editor was dragging one wheeled case, I was dragging the other wheeled case and carrying the the 40-pound tripod case while Producer was carrying the eight-pound DVCAM VCR and a couple of tapes. He bitched that we didn't have time to scout for the restaurant and then come back for the cases. I said, "There is NO FUCKING WAY I'm carrying these goddamn cases all over the fucking park looking for the restaurant!" Producer said he certainly wasn't going to walk all over the park just to come back here for the cases (at this point in the story I must reveal to the one reader left that Producer is a fat, lazy-ass.) So I said, "Fine! I'll go!" I dropped my cases — literally — and ventured off in the direction he wanted us to go in the first place. It only took me about five minutes to discover the restaurant — embarrassingly — about 100 yards down the main walkway from where we were standing at the entrance to the park.

No sooner had we arrived to the restaurant than Owner told me we were desperately in need of plug adapters, things that receive the flat-pronged American plugs and allow them to receive power through the round-pronged European plugs. He told me he needed a half dozen of them and left it to me to find out where to get them. I turned to one of the local hands who was helping set up at La Florida. He spoke a smattering of English, so I asked him "¿Dónde por la…?" and held out one of the plug adapters we had. He told me a store name, and I asked him to write it down. "El Corte Ingles on Goya Street."

I ran out to the street and hailed a taxi. I said the name of the store, and the driver took me there. "Aquí," he said, pointing at a massive building. "El Corte Ingles." Holy Crap! The store covered the whole block! I ran in and found myself in the middle of the ladies department! I found an escalator and went up. FOUR FREAKING FLOORS of ladies department! and then, above that, another three floors of men's clothing, with another floor or two above those! I ran back down to the ground floor and found another escalator down into a grocery store section. I looked for household goods, but found no plug adapters.

I saw a woman in a type of uniform. I assumed she was security. I asked her if she understood English, which she did not. It was around this time that I realized I should have told Owner to send a local with a wad of Euros to do this. He'd know where to go and who to ask...or I should've taken a local with me. I said "Electricos," which, to my utter surprise, was the right word. She pointed toward an exit and made it clear to me that I had to go outside, cross Goya Street, cross another street, and there was another "El Corte Ingles" department there. WTF?! So I went out the doors and, sure enough, in an entirely different building, there was another storefront beneath an "El Corte Ingles sign. It was an electronics department. I asked the people there, and the woman wrote on a piece of paper, "S. 1. Ferretéria." And then she spoke and waved her arm in the general direction of the street. Seeing obvious confusion on my face, the man standing with her kept saying what sounded like "Flock. Flock," only with the phlegmy 'G' sound that Angela had used in her name. "Flocchhh! Flocchh!"

Then he led me outside to the sidewalk and pointed right from the door. "Flocchhh! Bandera!" HOLY SHIT! The guy was trying to speak English! "Flocchh" was FLAG! It wasn't until I heard the freakin word "bandera" — a SPANISH word — that I realized he meant FLAG! There, about 50 yards away, was indeed a flag, and yet another "El Corte Ingles" storefront.

Thanking the man, I headed for the next puzzle. I had already burned so much time I was getting frantic. I looked around and saw nothing that looked like "electricos," so I headed up an escalator. After being deflected by an employee who must've been going on break, who told me when I called to him to go to the information desk…at least I think that's what he told me, I sought help from a woman, pantomiming with my hands — in what could possibly have been misconstrued as a proposition for sex — the description of what I needed. She tried to speak to me, but I was understanding nothing. Then she led me to a store directory map. She pointed to the floors below street level. To S1. To "Ferretéria." Fuck. That's what the note meant.

All the way at the bottom of a rack I finally found the items I needed, and five minutes, six plug adapters and $70 later, I was in another taxi and headed back to Parque de Retiro. When I arrived the attendees were already filing in to the restaurant. I was still in my shorts and t-shirt, sweating profusely and probably not smelling too fresh, and I needed to find Owner to give him the plug adapters. I saw him just as he saw me, and he freaked a little because of my attire. I gave him the adapters and he hustled me out of the room and out into an anteroom and bar area (not stocked, unfortunately). He pulled the cases out from where they had been hidden, and I began to set everything up to record the presentation. With a few minutes left to kill, I grabbed my clothes, ducked into the men's room and quickly changed into the shirt and slacks I had brought with me from the theater.

After the presentation was over and the attendees were snarfing down their food, we struck the gear and blew out of there. After putting the three cases I had into bell staff storage, I walked over to VIPS and had a steak dinner with a beer, and then I walked in the direction of the square we had found on the first night until I found what I had seen Wednesday night on the way back to the hotel from the Italian restaurant. I snapped the photo of the penguin holding a keg under one wing and a stein of beer with the other and thought, "Scarletvirago will love this."

September 12, 2008 • Friday
Producer, Editor and I headed for VIPS around 8:00am, but they were not yet open, so we headed to Faborit and had breakfast there.

Afterward I finished the last bits of packing I had to do in my room and then dragged my bags down to the lobby. We three retrieved the rest of the gear from bell storage and accounted for everything. The client had arranged a private van (more like a small bus) for us and our gear, which we loaded up and boarded for the airport. Producer had come in on an entirely different itinerary and airline, so Editor and I left him on the bus after we unloaded the gear and headed for the Iberia Airlines desk. We missed twice before finding the right ticket counter. We each had to pay €300 for the extra and overweight baggage, but were on our way soon enough.

We grabbed a quick bite at a McDonald's right there in the airport before I had to board my plane. Thanks to a booking oversight, Editor and I were scheduled on different flights from Madrid to London, mine leaving a half-hour before his. Editor wandered off to find some Tums, or their Spanish equivalent, and left me in the line to board the plane.

We met up again at Heathrow in the American Airlines departure lounge and boarded the plane together.

Nine hours later, as we rolled our seven cases (we were able to send two cases of gear back on an air cargo shipment with other show gear) past the customs agents, one of them stopped me and wanted to know what all the gear was. I told him it's video production gear. He asked me what we do. I told him. He became suspicious about the amount and told me we should think about getting a carnet next time. I told him about the registration form I had filled out prior to the trip, and he asked to see it. He looked at the two small pieces of paper and seemed satisfied that I was telling the truth.

With the way the rest of the trip had gone, I fully expected him to make us open every case and check every serial number.

This ranks up there among the top five worst show experiences I've encountered. This particular client's shows are usually fairly well organized, on their part and on ours. This one, however was a waking nightmare. I am tremendously happy to be home!